HID Headlights for 2007 Yukon – Comparison of OEM vs Morimoto Mini D2S 4.0 HID Projector
Summary: The HID high beams are a good upgrade for the 2007 Yukon. The HID low beams are not significantly better than the original OEM low beams. For other vehicles that have decent high beams to start with, the improvement from the HID projectors may not be as significant. As soon as the projectors arrive, check the operation of the high beam solenoids with a 9V battery.
My 2007 Yukon (not Denali) had an inch of water in the right (passenger side) headlight, plus the original Yukon high beams are lousy – they don’t illuminate the road any farther than the low beams. Since I had to remove the headlight anyway to fix the leak, I decided to upgrade to HID headlights. It was a good upgrade, and the HID high beams are a significant improvement on this particular vehicle. But I wouldn’t go to the effort to upgrade my other vehicles to HID since they have decent halogen high beams (and their headlights aren’t leaking).
The HID high beams shine way farther than the lousy Yukon OEM high beams and are a great improvement for the Yukon. But the Yukon OEM low beams actually shine farther than the HID low beams due to the sharp cutoff at the top of the HID low beams. So the HID provides better high beams for country driving, but the HID does not provide any more light for in-town driving with low beams due to the cutoff.
Since the Yukon OEM reflectors are so bad, I wouldn’t recommend using a HID bulb in the Yukon OEM reflector without a projector. You will throw out a large amount of light and glare with a poor light pattern.
You probably need to download the pdf of this to see the pictures. But the pictures don't add a whole lot except to show how lousy the OEM reflectors are, which you probably already know.
Exposure: Each group of 4 photos uses the exact same manual exposure.
OEM Low Beam OEM High Beam
Mini D2S Low Beam Mini D2S High Beam
OEM Low Beam OEM High Beam
Mini D2S Low Beam Mini D2S High Beam
Measurements: If you can see the pictures, each of the trees on the right side of the road is 33’ apart. The HID High Beam illuminates 200’, which is 3 times (3x) the distance of the OEM High Beam (66’). Conversely, the HID Low Beam illuminates 66’, which is 2/3 the distance of the OEM Low Beam (99’). Since the OEM low beam actually illuminates farther the the OEM high beam, a more realistic comparison would be to compare the HID high beam (200’) to the OEM low beam (99’), which is a 2x improvement.
My 2007 Yukon has the H13 single bulb headlight. I bought the following products for $370 from TheRetrofitSource.com: Morimoto Elite ballast, relay wiring harness, bulb, and Mini-D2S 4.0 projector. (I actually paid an extra $35 for the Mopar harness because I thought I might need the 4700 uf capacitor for the HID headlights to stay on properly with the Daytime Running Lights (DRL). But the HID headlights work fine with the DRL with or without the capacitor installed. My conclusion is that the 2007 Yukon doesn’t need the capacitor, so you don’t need the Mopar harness.)
D2S Point of No Return: The Mini-D2S shaft is about 4mm wider than the hole in the headlight reflector, so you have to ream out the hole in the hard plastic headlight reflector with a Dremel tool (grind off 2mm all around). Once you start reaming it out, you can’t go back and use the headlight with a normal halogen H13 bulb because you have totally destroyed the reflector socket for use with a halogen H13 bulb. It took me around 25 minutes to ream out one headlight reflector with a Dremel tool. It makes a lot of dust, so I wouldn’t do it indoors, or without a Dremel tool. After I re-sealed the first headlight, I realized I didn’t have enough threads protruding on the end of the shaft to screw on all three rings. The D2S shaft is not quite long enough to fit through the Yukon reflector. You also need to grind off about 5mm in the thickness of the reflector. You can grind off a couple mm on the inside of the reflector. But most of the depth you need will come from the back. Remove the rubber boot from the back of the headlight assembly and grind down that lip, which will provide the depth you need. While the Mini-D2S threaded shaft is significantly easier than having to glue the projector on, you still have to do significant cutting on the headlight reflector to get the shaft to fit through the hole.
Defective Mini-D2S: Per TRS advice on one of their videos, I tested the high beam solenoids on both projectors with a 9V battery before I started. One projector worked fine, and the other consistently stuck in the high beam position. So I had to mail that projector back and wait for TRS to mail me a replacement.
Poor Morimoto Quality Control: The Mini-D2S system I ordered only has two moving parts, one high beam solenoid in each projector, and 50% (1 out of 2) of those failed to work properly. Every time I tested this solenoid, it got stuck in the high beam position. This wasn’t an erratic failure. It was a 100% consistent failure. So Morimoto apparently does not test all their parts. They leave it to the consumer to test their parts. Failure of this solenoid appears to be a known problem, and the TRS video wisely recommends testing these solenoids before installing,. This obvious poor quality control on the projector solenoid makes me nervous about the quality of the rest of Morimoto’s parts.
Cost of Morimoto poor Quality Control: I made plans to install these Mini-D2S projectors over my Thanksgiving Holiday break. The weather was going to be decent for working outside on the car Friday and Saturday, and then snow was moving in on Sunday. I tested the solenoids on Wednesday and discovered the bad solenoid. Wouldn’t you know, TRS was closed Wednesday through Sunday of Thanksgiving week. Since I wanted to get the water out of the headlight before it froze, I went ahead and installed the one good projector and wire harness. Then I had to hassle with mailing the defective projector back during the holiday season, and waiting several weeks for the replacement to arrive.
Skill Requirements: I was extremely nervous about starting this project and having to get it finished in two days before winter weather moved in. While I am an engineer, I don’t do any car projects. But it turned out to be relatively straight-forward. It took me 5 hours to complete one headlight and install the wire harness. That’s after spending hours watching a whole bunch of videos on installing HIDs and removing the headlights on this vehicle. It took me three hours to complete the second headlight. I actually let my 15-year old son grind down the second headlight to teach him how to use tools, and he did fine. He likes to build models, and has very good fine motor skills.
Shroud: I used an Iris shroud because I like the smooth clean look. The Iris shroud just snapped right on to the Mini-D2S projector. I didn’t need to epoxy it on like some videos show, and like a guy at TRS said I would.
Permaseal: Supposedly the 2007 Yukon has Permaseal glue holding the headlight together instead of butyl rubber. I had read some horror stories about people taking an entire day to get one Permaseal headlight open. But mine came open very easily. I happened to have a wood chisel with sharp edges that I used instead of a screwdriver. It worked well for cutting through the stringy glue as I slid it around the perimeter. I didn’t need expanding pliers. I followed the TRS oven recommendation of 270F for 7 minutes. I used my wife’s silicon cooking gloves for taking the headlight out of the oven, but the silicon gloves are quite stiff and bulky, so I switched to some thin nitrile work gloves and was fine.
Wire harness Placement: I ran the wire harness between the two headlights on a little shelf behind the front grill and in front of the radiator. That was easy. I hung the relay box and ballast box with some thick solid copper wire on some crossbars immediately behind the right headlight. That seemed a lot easier than drilling a hole in some metal part and using a screw. The “battery +” wire reached the positive terminal of the battery, but the “battery –” wire wouldn’t reach the minus terminal of the wire. Finding a good spot for this “battery –” ground wire took a little while. Not a big deal, but a good ground is important. The left headlight doesn’t need to use the original headlight plug. The signal to turn on and power comes from the right side (i.e., the battery side) headlight plug.
